The stock price of Realtor.com's parent company, Move Inc., closed at $2.28 per share in regular trading Tuesday, down 2 cents from the previous day. On Oct. 22 the company's price per share dipped to $2.20, the lowest level since March 21, 2005.

These days, it's more expensive to buy a gallon of gas than to purchase a share of stock in some real estate-related companies. The U.S. Energy Department's Energy Information Administration reports that the average retail gas price per gallon was $3.06 as of Dec. 3. Compare that to Move Inc.'s $2.28 per share and home builder Standard Pacific's stock price of $2.99 per share at the close of regular trading today.

Rick Aristotle Munarriz, writing for The Motley Fool last month, noted that Internet-based real estate companies such as Move, ZipRealty and HouseValues have been hammered lately on Wall Street, with lackluster earnings, though he said that investors may see light at the end of the tunnel: "all three companies have balance sheets that are flush with greenbacks. In short, these may be ugly homes, but they're cheap and they have strong foundations. Investors who relish fixer-upper market opportunities might find something worth pursuing."

Is Move ripe for acquisition? The company hasn't announced any plans to sell. And Move Inc.'s operating contract requires that the National Association of Realtors' leadership would also need to consider approval of any such deal. Sramana Mitra, a Silicon Valley strategy consultant, suggested in a July blog post that Move could be an acquisition target.

She wrote: "We have reviewed the online real estate market in detail, and it is a vibrant segment. We have also reviewed Move’s feature-functions which are OK, although nothing exceptional. The valuation on the company is a rather affordable $620 Million, pegging this as yet another potential acquisition for an Internet conglomerate like Yahoo, NewsCorp, or IAC, or even for a new one in the making via private equity intervention or a public company roll-up." Could this/would this ever happen?

Boston law firm Mintz Levin says the collapse of the subprime market has created such demand from clients that it's formed a dedicated subprime practice group, with more than two dozen lawyers as members.

The firm has seen growing demand for advice on issues ranging from investigations by government authorities and claims against directors and officers to bankruptcy, says partner Richard Moche in a press release put out by the firm.

The firm -- Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, P.C. -- is one of at least five in the Boston area to form subprime lending practice groups or task forces, the Boston Globe reports.

Back in March, InmanBlog noted that another big law firm that made a mint in suits involving Enron and Lincoln Savings & Loan -- Lerach Coughlin -- was seeking to represent investors in class-action suits against a number of companies mired in the housing downturn, including Beazer Homes USA Inc., New Century Financial Corp., NovaStar Financial Inc., and Accredited Home Lenders Holding Co.

Since then, Lerach Coughlin has dropped "Lerach" from its name (it's now Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins LLP) and added Countrywide Financial Corp. and Radian Group Inc.to its list of prospective subprime cash cows.

Silicon Alley Insider, a New York-based technology blog, has just named the Silicon Alley 100, its annual list of the most influential folks in New York digital business.

#33 on the list; Curbed.com's Lockhart Steele. Steele, whose blog network includes Curbed, as well as Eater and Racked, covers New York, LA and San Francisco, and will be expanding soon into other U.S. cities. He is widely seen as a pioneer in real estate blogging.

Lockhart will also be keynoting this year's Bloggers Connect at Real Estate Connect NYC 2008 with a talk on the future of blogging. He'll give Bloggers Connect attendees a glimpse of what blogging will look like in years to come as well as where publishers and bloggers will push this medium next.

We've deliberately designed this year's Bloggers Connect to be a deeper discussion of how blogging is not only evolving as a tool for communication but as a tool for business and to that end, we've opened up our format to be much more of a conversation as we try to figure out this rapidly changing environment.

There's still time to register for Connect now to hear Lockhart, as well as be a part of the conversations.